so, I'm going to japan in a few weeks, to do this pilgrimage backpacking trip with a friend.

I'm very out of shape compared to the difficulty of the route (alltrails.com/explore/map/map-… : 4 days; average of 10 miles and 3200ft elevation gain)

So my plan is to train as much as I can between now and then. I've figured out this practice loop, starting from my house, that I'm going to try to work up to doing on both the 17th and 18th: alltrails.com/explore/map/kuma…

It takes a pretty cool path over the hills and down to the reservoir.

Anyone want to join for any of this? As you might guess I expect to be very slow and take lots of breaks (today I did only about half of this loop; 6-ish miles; and it took me like 4 hours)